Black History Month
Learning from Black Farmers, Leaders, Thinkers and Activists
“The ever increasing population and the imperative need for more varied, wholesome and nourishing foodstuff makes it all the more necessary to exhaust every means at our command to fill the empty dinner pail, enrich our soils, bring greater wealth and influence to our beautiful South land, which is synonymous to a healthy, happy and contented people.”
The food and farming landscape in this country was built on systems of slavery, indenture, and land seizure. It is designed to rely upon the exploitation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. The pattern continues today, with Black farmers still routinely excluded from and discriminated against by USDA loan programs, and Latinx and other immigrant food producers classified as essential workers (and sometimes forced to continue working despite grave threats to health, both personal and public), all while being overworked, egregiously underpaid, and constantly threatened with deportation. It is true that some members of Congress have tabled legislation to begin to bring justice to those who make affordable food possible for the masses during this pandemic, but it speaks volumes that our political systems still has not reckoned with these realities a year into this latest crisis. We honor the many mutual aid networks that have sought to provide support and establish justice where the government response was neglectful.
On the whole, we are still held dependent on the cheap, heavily-subsidized, chemically-poisoned food “system” foisted upon us by industrial farming corporations and a government in thrall to them — a system that slaughtered millions of livestock animals last year due to the unforgiving rules of supply and demand — that brittle behemoth that’s behind the designed wasting of food by the megaton, that neoliberal money pot still spitting out food that’s more nutrient deficient and soil-depleting in the last remaining 50-odd years of production we have left before climate change disrupts things even further… and not even billions of dollars could put it back together again in 2020. More and more people are going hungry, and this year is poised to be even worse than last.
Food sovereignty as a concept stresses redistribution of power, gives us cause to seek and share land, and motivates us to push policy initiatives on every level. How we relate to the land and each other is central to it all.
This month, we look to Black thought-leaders and organizers of the past and present to lead the way forward.
STEAM ONWARD
Accokeek, MD | Featured CGC Seed Hub
As a Seed Hub, STEAM ONWARD distributed seeds to 410 individuals
and 45 organizations in 2020 alone!
Challenge: We had so many requests at one time that our distribution system was overwhelmed. We have made adjustments to handle sudden rushes of seed requests.
What went well: The excitement of people receiving free seeds! Working with partnering organizations is so gratifying. We are always generating new ways to work with other organizations.
The mission of STEAM ONWARD as an organization is to increase the number of minority and under-served youth pursuing higher education in STEM related fields such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
We work with the Soil Conservation District to support urban farmers, and the Prince George’s Maryland County Senior Centers. During 2020, Steam Onward collaborated with a pilot gardening project – Home Grown Heroes – with Ag students at an area high school. This year Ag Programs at three more high schools are getting involved. We are also assisting faith-based-centers in our area to establish edible gardens. Some churches with food pantries are all excited about the possibilities of empowering their members to eat a healthier diet, and take on personal food sovereignty.
With our Cover Crop Project we will sow a mix that can be harvested from all winter and in the spring to cover and enrich soil. We have sowed the following mix in plots at food pantries that can be harvested all winter: radish, clover, turnips, cress, collards, kale, daikon, peas, and more.
Bonnetta Adeeb
STEAM ONWARD
@yrcp_steamonward
Commissioner with CoopGardens
Mural photo CCBY Mags on Flickr
Fannie Lou Hamer - Movement Matriarch
Born in 1917 as the 20th child of sharecroppers in Montgomery County, Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer grew up picking cotton and caring for her aging parents amidst a regime of white supremacist terror and violence in Mississippi. On her road to becoming one of the most influential activist-organizers of the Civil Rights era, she was shot at, viciously beaten, and sterilized against her wishes.
Active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Poor People’s Campaign, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conferences, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the National Women’s Political Caucus, and founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, Mississippi, as an attempt to redistribute economic power in her community, especially to Black farmers like her family.
Hamer at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 1964, Wikipedia
One of her most famous speeches, in Harlem in 1964 at an event with Malcolm X, is known as the “Sick and Tired of Being Sick And Tired” speech. It includes these lines: “We have been dying in Mississippi year after year for nothing. And I don't know, I may be bumped off as soon as I go back to Mississippi but what we should realize, people have been bumped off for nothing. It is my goal for the cause of giving those Negro children a decent education in the state of Mississippi and giving them something that they have never had. Then I know my life won't be in vain.”
George Washington Carver working in the lab from the P. H. Polk Family Collection courtesy of Tuskegee University Archives.
George Washington Carver
One of the first agricultural scientists in the US to advocate for the use of beans or leguminous cover crops, nutrient-rich mulching, and diversified horticulture. He was dedicated to the regeneration of depleted southern soils and turned to legumes such as cowpeas and peanuts, as a means to fix nitrogen and replenish the soil.
George Washington Carver was promoting Nature’s Garden for Victory and Peace in 1942, encouraging people to work with the abundance nature already provides, and helping us to see what are often seen as wild weeds as nutrient-rich sources of foods. It’s not that far a cry from today’s situation in some ways.
“Where there is no vision, there is no hope.””
Photo by Grace Winter
Free Seed Distribution
Shipping ASAP to the Southeast & Southwest!
Our main seed hub in Philadelphia is still pinning down a permanent location. In the meantime, Seed Distro Working Group organizers are staging as much as possible (in someone’s basement!) so bundles can start shipping shortly, first to hubs in the Southeast and Southwest. We’re still accepting applications for new and returning seed hubs, so apply today here: